12/07/2025
This is a super long read only it had me bawling because I see this so often in my world of Caregiving.
My name is Margaret Donovan. I’m 67 years old, and the name my husband called out this morning wasn’t mine.
He was looking for “Sarah.”
Sarah was his mother. She died in 1993.
The man from the benefits office called again yesterday. “Mrs. Donovan,” he said, his voice flat and tired, “we really need to discuss the long-term viability of at-home care. The costs are escalating.”
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream.
I wanted to say, “Son, do you know what the ‘long-term costs’ really are? It’s not the boxes of adult diapers in the garage. It’s not the prescription co-pays that devour our Social Security check. The real cost is hearing the man you’ve loved for 48 years ask, politely, if you’re the new nurse.”
But I didn’t say that. I just said, “We are managing, thank you.”
Because that’s what we do. We manage.
I met Frank Donovan on a chilly October night in 1975. I was 18, he was 19, and the entire town of Canton, Ohio, smelled like diesel exhaust and popcorn. He’d just come back from his first Army stint, and I was shivering in the bleachers at a high school football game.
He wasn’t the star quarterback. He was the quiet guy who bought me a hot chocolate from the concession stand and didn’t laugh when I spilled it all over my coat. He just handed me his own jacket.
He proposed a year later in the same stadium parking lot, after a losing game. The ring wasn’t new; it was his grandmother’s, thin and worn. He said, “Mags, I don’t have much. But I’ll work hard. I promise you that. We’ll build something good.”
And we did.
We didn’t have money, but we had strength. Our first home was a tiny duplex that always smelled like the neighbor’s cooking. Frank took a job on the line at the auto parts plant. I worked as a secretary at the local elementary school.
We saved. Lord, how we saved. We clipped coupons. We drove cars until the wheels nearly fell off. We built a life not with grand gestures, but with patched drywall and thousands of packed lunches.
We bought a small house with a big oak tree out front. We raised two children there—a boy and a girl—who grew up believing their father was the strongest man in the world.
But life has a way of reminding you that no one is invincible.
When Frank was 53, the plant “restructured.” That was the polite word for it. “Early retirement,” they called it. But it was a layoff. He lost his job, his purpose, and—most frightening of all—his premium health insurance.
He tried to find new work, but a 53-year-old man whose only skill was building transmissions? He became invisible.
A year later came the real diagnosis. Not from HR, but from a neurologist. Early-Onset Alzheimer’s.
At first it was little things. Misplaced keys. Missing a turn on a road he’d driven for decades.
He joked about it. “Guess my brain is ‘restructuring,’ too, Mags.”
We laughed. Because when the dark starts creeping in, you light a match and pretend it’s the sun.
But the years took him. Slowly. Piece by piece.
The man who could rebuild an engine from memory struggled with the buttons on a TV remote. The man who taught our son to drive got lost in our own neighborhood.
And I… I became someone new.
A caregiver. A nurse. A guardian of his dignity.
People love to talk about “self-care” these days. They tell you, “You can’t pour from an empty cup, Maggie.” They send you Facebook articles about “caregiver burnout.” They say, “You have to put yourself first.”
They mean well.
But they don’t understand.
They don’t understand that “staying” isn’t a one-time choice. It’s a choice you make a hundred times a day.
It’s the choice you make when you find your favorite wedding photo torn to pieces because he didn’t recognize the people in it.
It’s the choice you make when you bathe the body you once adored, doing it with gentle efficiency so neither of you has to speak the shame aloud.
It’s the choice you make when you cry only in the shower, where the water hides the sound.
Our son, Michael, visited last month. He’s a good boy, lives in Chicago. He sat at the kitchen table, and Frank looked at him kindly and asked, “Are you here to fix the furnace?”
I watched my son’s heart break. I watched him swallow his tears and say, “Yes, sir. Just checking the filters.”
That night, after Frank was asleep, I sat on the back porch. I was furious. Not at him. Never at him. I was furious at the disease, the insurance companies, God—at a universe that would let such a good, steady man simply fade.
I thought about leaving. Not leaving him, but just… leaving. Getting in the car and driving until I ran out of gas.
But I didn’t. I went back inside, checked his blankets, and went to bed.
Last week was our 45th anniversary.
I didn’t expect him to remember. I woke up, made the coffee, and laid out his pills. Just another Tuesday.
He was quiet all morning, sitting in his armchair, staring at the oak tree outside.
Around noon, he called my name. “Mags?”
His voice was clear. It was him. It was the voice I hadn’t heard in months.
I rushed over. “I’m here, Frank. What is it?”
He reached into the pocket of his robe. His hands trembled, but his eyes were sharp. He pulled out a small, worn blue velvet box.
“I… I got this a while ago, Mags,” he whispered. “I bought it… while I still knew how. Told the lady at the store to hide it for me.”
He placed it in my hand. “Happy anniversary.”
Inside was a simple silver locket.
Tucked beside it was a tiny folded piece of paper, written in his old, familiar handwriting:
“For every day you stayed.”
I broke.
I didn’t just cry—I shattered. I sat on the floor, my head in his lap, and sobbed. Sobbed for the man he was, the man he is, and the woman I’ve had to become.
He stroked my hair with a trembling hand. “It’s okay, Mags. You’re a good girl. You’re my girl.”
He slipped back into the fog a few hours later. But it didn’t matter.
He was there. He saw me. He saw the struggle, the sacrifice, the love.
We live in a world obsessed with the beginning of love—the first kiss, the proposal photos, the glamorous wedding. We post the highlights.
But that’s not love. That’s only the introduction.
Real love is the long, slow, grinding marathon. The messy part.
It’s the love that shows up when the paycheck stops. The love that holds your hand in the neurologist’s office. The love that learns to give a shot, clean a mess, and answer the same question twenty times with patience.
It’s not about finding someone to grow old with. It’s about finding someone you’re willing to care for when they grow old, sick, or broken.
Love isn’t measured by the sparks that start the fire. 🥰
It’s measured by the hands that—trembling, tired, but faithful—refuse to let go.🙏🏼
